Drug executives should take a Hippocratic oath

Share

Copy the link

Last month, pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud. In August 2015, his company bought monopoly rights to a life-saving drug that treats parasitic infections in people with weak immune systems. Without adding any value or doing significant research, the company then raised the drug’s price by more than 5,000%, from US$13.50 to $750 for a single tablet. Plenty of drug-industry insiders decried Shkreli as “not one of us”, emphasizing the virtues of biotechnology and innovative pharmaceuticals. But when any executive engages in price gouging, it validates the negative bias against the drug industry. Innovators and opportunists will go down together, unless the former agree to push the latter out.

Please sign in or register for FREE

Sign in to Grand Challenges at Springer Nature

Register to Grand Challenges at Springer Nature

The world is facing complex and interconnected issues like sustainability, resource scarcity, global health, and inequality. These “grand challenges” affect society at both the global and the local level. In order to solve these, researchers must collaborate across disciplinary boundaries, and connect with policymakers and practitioners.
As a global publisher with content across all subject disciplines, Springer Nature can help. We understand how crucial these challenges are, and have created this space to bring together our content and resources to address these issues. We want to help to connect the best research evidence with those at the cutting edge of implementation, with the ultimate aim of advancing the discovery and development of solutions to grand challenges.